Spain Bans Cash Transactions Over 2,500 Euros … Spain has outlawed the use of cash in business transactions in excess 2,500 euros in order to crack down on the black market and tax evaders. The motivations behind the push for digital currencies is exposed as Spain heads down the road of the Greeks in combating their sovereign debt crisis. As the government scrambles for every tax dollar it can get its hands on, even though they already gave every Spaniard $23,000 Euros in debt last year alone (approximately $32,500), they are now banning all large cash business transactions. Why? So they can track the transactions and make sure that people and business are paying taxes. Being able to track the transactions is also aimed to combat the growing black market in Spain. – Alexander Higgins' blog

Dominant Social Theme: This cash has gotta go. It's evil.

Free-Market Analysis: They are not even making a pretense anymore that the West is run via market economies. As we have long predicted, the phony "sovereign debt" crisis in Europe is being used to justify all sorts of authoritarian measures.

It is government pols that gladly borrowed what European banks threw at them. And somehow the upshot earlier this week is that Spanish citizens now lose the right to conduct many transactions in cash.

Spectactularly, the reports such as this one, excerpted above, don't even both to hide the real point. The Spanish government wants to ensure that it can "track transactions and make sure that people and businesses are paying taxes."

Of course, anyone who has visited Spain of late knows that the tax burden in Spain is onerous indeed, and is one reason that the truculent tribes that have co-existed uneasily with Madrid are again beginning to beat the drums of secession.

The taxes that the central government levies on small businesses especially are verging on punitive. But there are no apologies. The official position is one of unflinching demands.

It is surely part of a larger meme having to do with a "cashless" society. Just recently the UK Telegraph asked "Is mobile the way we'll all be paying?" The answer, as can be expected, was a qualified yes, but issued in the predictable upbeat way.

The cashless society has been a much-mooted concept ever since consumer credit cards were widely introduced in the 1950s. Now it seems that “mobile money” is the new gold rush. The term – used to describe the way the mobile phone is used to pay for goods – yields no fewer than 126 million results on a Google search …

Market research firm Yankee Group believes that global mobile transactions will become a $1trillion market by 2015. While Berg Insight says there will be 894m worldwide users of mobile banking by the same year. Peter Ayliffe, chief executive of Visa Europe, who sits on the Monitise board, believes 50pc of all Visa transactions in Europe will be on a mobile device by 2020.

The top men are beginning to issue their predictions. The march to a cashless society has begun. Perhaps we owe Spain a debt of gratitude for revealing the REAL reason for a cashless society. It makes tax collecting so much easier.

But this is only part of the story. Taxes are certainly to be paid … but the RESULTS of tax payments and the government expenditures they give rise to are seemingly more questionable every day.

In Spain this is certainly evident. The REAL problem that Spain faces as its depression spirals out of control is the infrastructure that politicos built over the past decade. Every small town has bike paths, outdoor parks and other unnecessary public venues that will soon prove, well … unsupportable.

Gradually, the infrastructure sinks into disrepair, further exacerbating the loss of what was once gratifying. These expanding open sores in civic centers create additional dissonance. Spain has created public places everywhere with giddy exuberance. Soon it will be a kind of national "tragedy of the commons."

There is not much discussion of this plight, however. Most of the conversation centers around putting young people to work. Up to 50 percent of Spanish youngsters are out of work or can't find jobs and many of the rest live in fear that they will lose their positions.

There is now, in fact, starting to be a Diaspora of young people from Spain. Virtually all of South America speaks Spanish – and many countries are doing rather well. Argentina, especially, is attracting youngsters; Chile, too, presumably.

The cash ban is probably looked on by many in Spain as yet one more petty annoyance but these annoyances are piling up over time. When mixed in with the larger difficulty of the dysfunction of the Spanish economy, such issues can surely create an explosive situation. Here's more from the article:

Those who violate the ban will face fines of 25% of the payment made in cash. The Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, has announced on Wednesday that the plan to combat tax evasion on Friday approved the Cabinet prohibit the payment in cash transactions of over 2,500 euros and which at least involved a businessman professional.

During the control session the Government in the House of the Congress of Deputies and in response to a question about the tax amnesty made by the general coordinator of IU, Cayo Lara, the Prime Minister, has revealed that those who violate the ban will face fines of 25% of the payment made in cash.

The Government had already advanced the plan to combat fraud limitations include the use of cash for certain operations, although he had not yet specified which would place the threshold (yes at the time there was talk that it could be 1,000 euros for self-employed).

This measure aims to prevent the use of black money in commercial transactions and, in the case of companies, give them an obstacle to not resort to false invoices. The plan to combat fraud adopted on Friday, the Cabinet intends to raise up to 8.171 million euros in 2012.

We can see clearly the conflation between fraud and bad times. Of course, desperate people will do desperate things – and the "austerity" program that the Spanish government is following will only exacerbate matters.

To their credit, Spanish officials have generated some tax-forgiveness programs of late, but these, too, are proving controversial. Spanish politicos, like their counterparts elsewhere, are inclined to accept Brussels' dictates for "austerity" as the ultimate solution to the current mess.

But is it really so simple? As we have often pointed out, the elites running the Southern PIGS were basically bribed by Brussels money to bring their countries aboard the EU. Now that the EU is collapsing, these individuals are nowhere to be found. The citizens are faced with the bill – and with paying back the banks.

Increasingly, we believe, those trapped in this situation are well aware of their manipulation. What we call the Internet Reformation has made them well aware of their manufactured plight. At some point there will be serious repercussions.

This is what the power elite – a few dynastic families behind the EU and much of the world's globalist mischief – may not have entirely anticipated. We have to think that the EU takedown was created to further the aims of globalism. But those at the top did not take into account the dawning realizations that the Internet was capable of generating.

Now the trap has been sprung. The "sovereign debt crisis" is creating a larger globalist presence, puffing up the IMF and creating further EU integration. This was all part of the plan, no doubt.

The move to get rid of cash is also part of the larger plan, we're sure. The idea is for every transaction to be tracked and controlled. The mass of people is to be further disciplined and herded. Global government is to be the result.

After Thoughts

The mechanism is increasingly transparent. They hardly bother to hide it anymore. But here is our question: Do they believe that people cannot read … or think? Do they believe people will hold their aggregate resentment in check forever? There seems to be a kind of baiting going on, and it may not end well.